oppression

Support staff in higher education abused by managers, colleagues and students
Non teaching staff in Higher Education are not only the lowest paid in the public sector, but also face abuse from managers, colleagues and students, with 20% suffering some form of violence, a UNISON survey has revealed.

This is very worrying. And another thing I've always wondered, why are the lowest-paid staff the most heavily supervised? If you're cleaning or catering staff, someone is on your back all the time to make sure that you are working every minute of the day. This is illogical, as if they spend a few minutes slacking, it's not going to cost their employer very much. But higher-paid staff are largely unsupervised, and can spend their time blogging, chatting on the phone, etc etc. All of which is euphemistically referred to as "thinking time". Yeah, right. And our slack time costs a lot more.